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Hardeeville's 'cute kid'

Gwyneth J. Saunders/Hardeeville Today McKinley Figueroa stand below some of the trophies and sashes she has won in various contests and beauty pageants, including the Catfish Festival which she has won.

McKinley Figueroa’s main interests are princesses and DreamWorks’ “Kung Fu Panda.” Being cute is a natural talent at 4 years old and her parents aren’t the only ones who think so.

McKinley was among a handful selected from hundreds of submitted photos in a contest conducted by South magazine, a publication headquartered in Savannah focusing on Southern heritage — and the people who live here.

She was not only selected as one of the winners but snagged the cover — something her parents did not know until the magazine hit the newsstands.

“We had no idea about the cover until a friend called and said congratulations,” said Jennifer Figueroa. “I asked for what. She said, ‘For getting the cover.’ We expected to get our copies Dec. 1 but the magazine hits the newsstands earlier and that’s where our friends saw McKinley.”

Figueroa said they had a lot of fun with it and even formed “Team Figueroa” to get plenty of people to vote online as often as possible.

“They picked the top two kids from each age group and when we went down to the photo shoot, we were told that McKinley would be part of a 10-page spread,” she said. “We actually got a full-page picture and the cover.”

The photo shoot was somewhat pressure-filled, Figueroa said, but for McKinley it was apparently no big deal.

“Everybody there was really sweet to her and it was just like all the people you see on TV in the studio,” she said. “I was on the other side of the room. I could have been gone. She just rolled with it.”

It’s not the first time McKinley has been in the limelight. She is a past winner and runner-up of the Miss Catfish Festival, won the Sunburst Pageant at the Savannah Mall, was named first runner-up at the Gopher Hill festival and was entered in a different online contest when she was only a year old.

“She’s usually a chatterbox,” Figueroa said.

Much to the surprise of her mother, McKinley did not have a lot to say about the contest, but her opinion of the whole event summed it up pretty well.